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IBM Kenexa vs SAP SuccessFactors comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Kenexa
Ranking in Talent Management
17th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (16th), Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software (10th)
SAP SuccessFactors
Ranking in Talent Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Cloud HCM (2nd), Talent Acquisition (2nd), Global Payroll (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Talent Management category, the mindshare of IBM Kenexa is 1.6%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 9.2%, down from 20.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Talent Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP SuccessFactors9.2%
IBM Kenexa1.6%
Other89.2%
Talent Management
 

Featured Reviews

Karan Grover - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Suitable for larger-scale companies aiming to streamline and automate their processes digitally
The deployment of the solution took between six to eight months. When we introduced BrassRing at my company, we encountered several challenges. First, moving data from our old system to BrassRing was tough because it needed reformatting. Second, connecting BrassRing with our HR data was tricky due to manual processes for roles and departments. Third, setting up the workflow in BrassRing was complex. Fourth, configuring user access and approval levels was a detailed task. We also had to manage the change process, including running both old and new systems in parallel, communicating changes, and training users. Lastly, monitoring and reporting were needed to ensure data accuracy and proper system usage once everything was in place. We had a team of six to eight people managing the project from our side during the BrassRing deployment. I'm not sure about the size of the BrassRing team, and we also had our own technical team, which had three to four members. The solution required maintenance, particularly from my side as the administrator. Maintenance responsibilities were divided into two parts: some tasks we, as end-users, could control, while others were the responsibility of the BrassRing team. Payment-related tasks were a regular part of our responsibilities. I wasn't the only person maintaining the solution. There were three power users from Infosys, each responsible for a specific geography. My counterpart managed it in the US, and I, along with my colleague in India, managed it for other geographies.
SS
Assistant Manager at Kashiv Biosciences
HR has gained clear analytics for attrition, goals, and appraisals and manages talent efficiently
SAP SuccessFactors has a low error rate. We had many ad hoc reports that we needed to generate, and it was very easy to do so in SAP SuccessFactors. We also created many in-house reports according to our specific requirements with the help of this tool, which was a really big game changer for us. We did not depend on advanced Excel in those cases. We generated a lot of detailed reports whenever we needed them during emergency cases or board meetings. A lot of usefulness and time were saved in those cases. I will also mention that we conducted a comparative study for some recruitment cases. We had a recruitment model where we were looking for a very niche profile. Since the job profile was really different and rare, we had to depend on analytics to understand and shortlist from a large pool of candidates that we already had in our database. Analytics was really helpful in this situation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Scalability is great, as we use the system for everything from a very low-volume, high-touch corporate recruiting model to our tax office, high-volume approach, which is 80-100,000 people each season."
"We use the Viewpoint and that is an absolutely powerful tool; it is extremely helpful to get more insights, and to start a conversation with our employees to grow and improve."
"From everything I’ve seen and heard, I would think Kenxea is probably one of the top three, if not the best, in the business that they do and the things that we use them for."
"Now, having provided this, amongst many other things, we have a much closer relationship to the business."
"The ease of scaling is one of BrassRing's biggest strengths, making it a trusted choice for large companies."
"It allowed for truly global listing for all open positions."
"Overall, from a recruiter's perspective, it is an excellent product and is probably one of the best recruitment products out there in terms of usability, ease of understanding, and management of large applicant pools."
"We acquired a pharmacy retailer three years ago, and Kenexa enabled us to actually standardize our employee engagement across both of those organizations, helping us understand at an enterprise level what was going on and, most importantly, how people were starting to feel about being acquired and joining the broader company space."
"This solution offers good flexibility and configurability. It can handle different types of performance management."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the performance management module."
"SAP SuccessFactors is stable, we have not found any bugs or glitches."
"It's a uniform user interface."
"The most valuable features of SAP SuccessFactors are onboarding, recruiting, marketing, and performance."
"It is a scalable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"It is a scalable solution."
"We use the cloud version to maintain all the employee records, payroll, etc. We use everything that comes with the HR suite."
 

Cons

"I get a real sense of frustration when you see the kind of customer insight teams and what they can do and then you look at the colleague insights teams, which I'm leading on as well, and seeing there's a gap and we need to close that gap."
"My rating is not higher because of the support, honestly; the global service center model."
"If you happen to be an early adopter of enhancements, it can be a frustrating process, as it is hard to decipher together with their support whether an issue is a bug or working as intended (a change in the way something works)."
"Improved integrations: There are all kinds of issues with integrations, hires failing."
"The team didn't find the reporting tool that easy to use, in terms of pulling their own data, slicing and dicing it, combining groups."
"Maybe there's some room for improvement in the functionality around the actual tools that we build with."
"IBM Kenexa has a lot of room for improvement. The solution is not advancing anymore in terms of the user experience and in the workflows."
"The reporting tool is helpful, but it is not the easiest to train on or is not as understandable for other HR pros. Their Workbench site, which is the administrator site that you use to update your website, is not user-friendly. When updates are required, it is not that easy to manage because Workbench is not user friendly. It required more work from the admins. They have Workbench training, which actually was very unhelpful. It took eight hours to complete, and it was not very helpful. Their customer service when it comes specifically to their Workbench site is not helpful."
"Everything, including the provisioning dependency, should be moved to the instance, and coding should be kept to a minimum. Wherever possible, coding should be minimized, and everything should be a drag-and-drop."
"The technology is changing quickly and the solution requires support but it's not forthcoming."
"It is not that user-friendly."
"For SAP, the product is pricey, both CAPEX and the OPEX."
"There is an area of improvement in integrating SuccessFactors with different platforms."
"We had stability issues very often during the end of the year and after updates."
"The integration with Employee Central and Employee Central Payroll needs improvement as the client is still considering on-premises solutions."
"They have a set of web services and connections to them. The libraries were not up-to-date and this contributed to the complexity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kenexa was fairly priced. However, in 2019, before I left my previous organization, they significantly increased their pricing. It can be affordable, but their pricing is going up. It is not just licensing; it is how many applicants you have in your system on the database side."
"We have a yearly license. There are no additional costs."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of modules that are being used, and the number of users."
"I have raised change requests for some modules within SuccessFactors. For example, when you're using Recruiting Management, there's a feature called Interview Central you can use to reach the candidates you're interviewing. I wanted to add a writing assessment when I select the competency on that platform. It varies from consultant to consultant, depending on what module they use."
"It could be cheaper."
"The cost of SAP SuccessFactors is reasonable."
"I think the pricing is a little better than most solutions out there. There are reasonable prices when it comes to some of the modules such as the Payroll module, and for the remaining modules I believe the pricing is fair in comparison to the rest of the market."
"This is a more costly solution than comparable products, and training is not available in the open-market, so this has to be purchased separately from the vendor."
"Probably, it is one of the priciest products, and is very costly to put up and maintain but because it is a good solution end to end, people take it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

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What are the biggest differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors?
Differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud,w and SAP SuccessFactors:w Oracle: "simple interface and deep customization to suit the purpose." SAP: Multiple functionalities that increase process effi...
What is better, SAP HCM or SAP SuccessFactors?
When it comes to user experience, SuccessFactors is unquestionably superior, as it provides end users with a new experience and an advanced user interface. Additionally, the entire concept of SF is...
How easy is to maintain Workday, Oracle Cloud, and SuccessFactors?
I implemented Workday in 2024 and without having previous Workday experience, it was very challenging. I spent most of 2025 putting out fires and cleaning up the business processes that came with l...
 

Also Known As

IBM Smarter Workforce, Outstart
SuccessFactors
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sweet Spot International (SSI), Leo Burnett Worldwide (LBW), Sika AG, Legacy Health, Apollo Group Inc., Regeneron, Transurban Group, National Health Service, New Zealand Police, Overland Footwear, Yealands, Johnson Controls, Allscripts, Kerry Foods, Masterpet, AMD, Balfour Beatty
City of Cape Town, ADAMA Agricultural Solutions Ltd., TransAlta Corporation, Keolis, PT XL Axiata Tbk, National Football League (NFL), Plan International, Yoh, A Day & Zimmermann Company, China Talent Group (CTG TMO), Umicore S.A., Butterfield Bank, Skril
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Kenexa vs. SAP SuccessFactors and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,915 professionals have used our research since 2012.